Denman Marine Voyage

This is the first dedicated marine science voyage by Australia's icebreaker RSV Nuyina. The scientific research program is multidisciplinary in nature and a collaboration between four of Australia’s leading Antarctic science organisations from government and universities: the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership (AAPP), the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science (ACEAS), Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF), and the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD).

The voyage is undertaking ambitious work that is critical for Australia’s future and the welfare of the global community, in a newly emerging region of concern for Antarctica’s contribution to sea-level rise: the Denman glacier-ice shelf system.

The marine science projects on the voyage aim to:

• Use ship-based observations, moorings, remotely-operated gliders and robotic floats to gather information about the temperature and salinity of the ocean, the effects on current and future ice mass loss, and future sea level rise
• Map the shape and depth (bathymetry) of the ocean floor to determine the pathways for warm water to travel from the edge of the continental shelf to the Denman Glacier
• Collect rock samples and cores of ocean sediments to reconstruct the advance and retreat of the Denman Glacier over many thousands of years 
• Collect chemical and biological data to explain why waters in the west are more biologically productive than in the east
• Develop the first detailed maps of the sea floor in this region, and the unique life it supports, to inform conservation efforts
• Record video and collect seafloor and fish specimens to understand the seafloor biodiversity and its vulnerability to changes
• Undertake atmospheric research with radars, chemical sensors and weather balloons to trace the connections between marine biology and how clouds form over the Southern Ocean
• Use the Nuyina’s ‘wet well’ to capture plankton and study how environmental changes in the ice and the ocean will affect food webs

The workforce onboard is diverse and mostly from universities, from undergraduate students to professors, developing future generations of polar research leaders. The voyage involves four individual partner science organisations operating as part of the Australian Antarctic Program.